Lumpenproletariat

Lumpenproletariat , (German: “rabble proletariat”), according to Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto, the lowest stratum of the industrial working class, including also such undesirables as tramps and criminals. The members of the Lumpenproletariat—this “social scum,” said Marx—are not only disinclined to participate in revolutionary activities with their “rightful brethren,” the proletariat, but also tend to act as the “bribed tools of reactionary intrigue.”

...and whose chief source of income was derived from the sale of their labour power. As an economic category it was distinguished in Marxian literature from the poor, the working classes, and the Lumpenproletariat. Because of its subordinate position in a capitalist society and the effects of periodic depressions on wages and employment, the proletariat as described by Marxists was...